The Empress of Mars (17 page)

He began to sing, quietly, in a language Alice did not know, something sonorous and beautiful. It slowed her angry heartbeat. It calmed her. She fell asleep and dreamed she was lying in a green field, under an immense yellow sun, and flowers were blooming all around her.

A week later the bar was quiet and near empty, all the holiday debris swept up. Mary stood behind the bar, moving her bar towel in steady circles on the stone surface. Years of polishing had given it a lovely gloss. Was it the color of rose quartz? No . . . nor porphyry, nor jasper, nor coral. Opal matrix, she decided.

“Perrik won’t even talk to
me
,” said Cochevelou miserably, where he sat huddled over an ale. “How am I going to get him to talk to a stranger? And such a bold straightforward in-your-face sort of stranger at that.”

“He doesn’t
have
to talk to anyone,” said Mary. “You know that. I wouldn’t trust this Nennius bugger any farther than I could spit, I tell you plain.”

“But what if he’s right about the biis being worth millions on Earth?” said Cochevelou. “There’s been some rumors started already among my folk, I don’t know how. Dev and Kev and Padraig all came to me, asking if it was true we’ve been sitting on a fortune all this time, and might have sold the biis to get rich before now?

“When times were hard, we were like fingers on one hand making a fist, united and resolved. But with the diamonds, and then all this talk of money . . . there’s some have begun to talk about giving it up and going back Down Home, once we’re all bloody millionaires.”

“And what’s to become of terraforming Mars?”

Cochevelou shrugged. “The clan isn’t for Mars,” he said. “Necessarily. The clan is for the clan. If I can make ’em rich, then that’s my duty as chief. What I was wondering was . . . if you wouldn’t ever mind coming down to our place and seeing if you can have a word with the boy? He’s always liked you, you know.”

Clan Morrigan’s fields were swarming with little points of light when Mary came down the Tube with Cochevelou. Not only gold now but the occasional blue light danced over the rows. Down near the soil she caught glimpses of red lights like hot matchheads congregating around the bases of the plants, and wondered what they did there. The clan residential halls were largely deserted; people were either laboring in the ironworks or in the cattle pens, at this hour of the day.

“The boy’s like his mother,” said Cochevelou suddenly, unbidden as he plodded along beside her. “She was never one for talking to anybody. Even to me. Wild as a little lost bird. She let me look after her, you know, and talk to other people for her, and keep away the shadows and the drafts. So delicate and nervous in her ways, and yet she had a steely will. Just like him. Half the time I wondered whether she wasn’t some princess strayed from the courts of the sidhe.”

“And did you find her beside a hollow hill, then?” said Mary absently, wondering what sort of mood Perrik might be in.

“Never. Waiting in an agbus queue in Knockdoul, of all places.”

“I’ll just fetch us a dram, shall I?” said Cochevelou, ushering her into his private chamber. He vanished out through the lock, and Mary doubted he’d be back anytime soon.

She heard a steady pullulating drone coming from Perrik’s chamber. As she seated herself to think, a stream of little golden lights emerged into the room through one vent grating, and vanished again through another. More followed. She watched for a while as the lights came and
went, knowing she couldn’t just knock on the door and call Perrik’s name.

At last she began to sing, the first tune that popped into her head: “All Through the Night.” Mary had an old-fashioned trilling soprano, still remarkably intact after all those years’ exposure to Martian dust. She sang, full-throated, and after a while the hatch opened and Perrik looked out at her. She left off singing and smiled at him.

“Oh, good morning, Perrik dear,” she said. “I was just visiting your dad, see, and he got called away.”

“Would you like to see the new biis?” he asked her without preamble.

“I should like that very much, Perrik,” she replied as she rose to her feet. He held the hatch for her and closed it as soon as she’d passed through.

And caught her breath. The globe frame in the corner had been replaced by a bigger one, alive with shifting and pulsing lights in all colors, glowing like a stained-glass window at noon. “How beautiful,” she murmured.

“It’s a visual pleasure, but it only gets better,” said Perrik. “Look at this.” He held out his hand and flexed it; a few golden motes came at once and settled in the cup of his palm. “Here are the pollinators, right? They handle the primary task.”

A few blue lights followed and became part of the shifting mass in his hand. “And the drones, and they handle the secondary task. And what is the secondary task?”

“S-secondary task is, let’s see, seeking out weeds and unwanted plants and eating them,” said Mary, knowing that it mattered terribly to Perrik that she remembered. “And then converting the cellulose into a polymer, and excreting it in pellets, for the . . . ?”

“Red ones,” said Perrik, smiling as a cluster of red lights joined the others in his hand. “Call them Haulers, if you like. And
they
collect the pellets and take them back to the hive. As well as bringing back minerals they pick up from the soil. Back to the hive with the lot. There to . . . ?”

“Well, not to make honey, I expect,” said Mary. “Nor to make wax, not out of polymer. They use it for . . . building material?”

“You’re almost there,” said Perrik. “Building material to make . . . ?”

“A bigger hive?” Mary guessed.

“No.” Perrik rolled his shoulders, and a whole network of green lights emerged from a box across the room and landed in his hand. “More biis. These are the mechanics, you see? They use what the Haulers bring back to repair or replace damaged biis. And they build new ones, so the hive continues to grow.” He looked with satisfaction at the cluster of moving jewel colors he held. “A perfect self-sustaining society. A closed system. What do you think?”

No wonder the British Arean Company’s suddenly interested in them
, thought Mary. “I’m impressed, dear. It’s exactly what we need.”

“I might do more with them. I might make some that play around with molecules to create oxygen. I don’t know, though; that would require a terrific lot of modifications. I don’t think that’s for the biis. Probably the next project,” said Perrik thoughtfully.

“Have you shown your dad?”

“Not the mechanics, no,” said Perrik, with contempt edging into his voice. “He wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, I think he might, dear.”

“If he actually paid attention to what I was saying. If he didn’t just go into his ‘That’s my little genius!’ act,” said Perrik, turning his arm as the biis moved along it toward his shoulder. “But he doesn’t really understand.”

“Well.” Mary looked down. “That’s between you and your dad, I suppose. But, you know, dear, other people are starting to be interested, too. There’s a new clerk the BAC has now, very interrogatory he was. Wants to meet you. Talk to you, face-to-face, about the biis.”

“What?” Perrik looked at her, startled.
“Meet
me?”

“Meet with you, dear, and ask you all kinds of questions. Says he’d like to help you with the marketing and all.”

Before her eyes, the self-possessed boy began to crumble. He paled, developed a tic under one eye, turned away. “Marketing? No. No. Why
would I want to market them with the British Arean Company? They’re the evil corporate overlord. They’d grab all the money for themselves. They wouldn’t appreciate the design, they’d want to change it around and ruin it. And anyway, I can’t talk with anyone! I’m too busy! Too many projects. I don’t have all the time in the world to waste in social chitchat, in
talking
, don’t they see that?”

As his voice rose the drone of the biis grew louder too, and hundreds of points of light left the globe frame, came and spun around him in apparent agitation.

“They’re evil corporate overlords,” said Mary. “Of course they don’t see it. But you needn’t talk to them, Perrik dear. In fact, I think it would be a bad idea.”

“And I’ll just bet Dad invited them in to come see me, didn’t he?” Perrik raved, the center of a whirling storm of colored light. “ ‘Sure, you just come right on in and stare at my bloody little freak genius!’ ”

“He did not!” said Mary sharply. “And shame on you, boy, if you don’t know your father any better than that. He told ’em you were too busy, of course he did.”

“Then that’s then end of the matter,” said Perrik, retreating to a corner of the room. “Case closed. No further discussion.” But his biis were an increasingly angry cloud around him, a surging nebula. Mary found herself wondering how he controlled them.

“Would you like me to leave now, Perrik?” she asked.

“Please,” he said shortly.

Yet before she had got as far as the door he was beside her again, with his arms around her and his averted face buried in her neck. “Please,” he muttered through tears, “please don’t let strangers come in here.” Mary stood very still, as the biis spun around them both. Had the boy built them with stings? She had never asked.

“Your dad and I will be sure of that, Perrik,” she said gently.

“I
told
you they’re uncooperative,” said Mr. Rotherhithe with a trace of smugness. “It’s all very well to draw conclusions and make plans from a nice clean well-ordered office Down Home, young man, but when you’ve been up here a while, as I have, you’ll find that Earth rules don’t apply in this damned place.”

“Very true, sir,” said Mr. Nennius. “These are, however, only the opening moves in the game. May I see the immigration files on Clan Morrigan?”

Mr. Rotherhithe sniffed, and tapped in the request. The screen rose from its slot in his desk and displayed a document. Mr. Nennius leaned forward and studied it. He began to smile.

“Oh, my,” he said. “No genetic screening was done.”

“Of course no genetic screening was done,” said Mr. Rotherhithe, with an irritable wave of his hand. “The Company was taking anyone it could get, and it was right after the Edinburgh Treaty was signed. We bent over backwards for anyone we could induce to come up here. ‘Takes all kinds to settle a world,’ that was the official slogan. So if you’re thinking of getting at them that way, my boy, you won’t succeed.”

“Of course not,” said Mr. Nennius, advancing the display to read
further. “But it is one more bit of leverage. Time for something audacious, I think. Rattle them a little. What’s your password, sir?”

Ottorino folded his hands on the tabletop and leaned forward, all polite interest. Mamma Griffith set his tea before him, a big mugful deliciously sweetened and buttered, and sat down on the opposite side of the table, next to Mr. De Wit. Rowan was sweeping the floor, vigorously, refusing to look at anyone. She seemed angry about something. He had learned that it was dangerous to use the translator for their more intimate communications, since it tended to result in hysterical laughter or affronted silence on Rowan’s part, and in any case he was tolerably good at communicating his romantic intentions without the use of words. In day-to-day matters, however, he was still at a disadvantage, especially when the matter under discussion was something his bride did not care to discuss.

Mamma Griffith smiled at him and said something. He was learning enough PanCelt to pick out words like
talk
and
prospecting
and
maybe
. Mr. De Wit coughed into his fist and cleared his throat.

“Ms. Griffith is delighted that your leg is healing as well as it is,” he said. “And, while she understands that it was your intention to be a diamond prospector, she is a little concerned that such a hazardous lifestyle could leave her daughter a widow.”

“Ah, but I’m a lucky man,” said Ottorino. “Not only finding a beautiful diamond, but a far more precious jewel in her most beautiful child.”

“That is true, but such luck is rare,” said Mr. De Wit. “And, while your wife will only become dearer to you, the price of diamonds has already begun to fall.”

Mamma Griffith said something, for the better part of a minute, with enthusiastic gestures and wide eyes. She finished and looked at him hopefully.

“Ms. Griffith has a suggestion. You have seen by now that, while
there are more and more settlers arriving here on Mars, there are still very few services for them. This is, for example, the only restaurant, and in practical terms the only hotel of any kind. The rolling card room could scarcely be said to benefit the community. But she feels it
would
be of great benefit to the community at large if someone were to open a shop where people could buy abundant goods at reasonable prices.”

“That would certainly be a good idea,” said Ottorino, remembering the scantily stocked and expensive British Arean Company PX.

Mamma Griffith said something more, in the same vein, at some length.

“She feels, in fact,
you
might want to open a shop. You have a sizeable amount of capital coming to you from Polieos, and she knows that your family are in the importing business and might be able to arrange shipments of goods from Earth.”

“Oh,” said Ottorino. For a moment his heart struggled in his chest like a trapped bird, under the weight of the prospect. Words of lead:
Respectable employment. Joining the family business at last. Behaving like a responsible adult
.

But then the vision came to him: the red desert as background, dotted with tumbleweeds and saguaros, and himself as in an old photograph, proud aproned proprietor standing before his clapboard building with its two-story false front, lifting his derby on high to point at the painted sign:
EMPORIUM DI VESPUCCI
.